Calvados infused apple cakes
Easy halloween themed apple cakes with cream cheese frosting
Equipment
- 12-hole, deep, muffin tin
- 3 strips of food grade acetate approx. 20 x 30 cm
- Rolling Pin
- 5cm round cookie cutter
- baking parchment
- stencil for witches’ hats (see notes below)
Ingredients
Cake
- 100 g eggs
- 175 g golden caster sugar
- 92 g sunflower oil
- 175 g plain flour (can substitute with gluten free flour - see notes below)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp bicarb
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground cloves
- 200 g raisins soaked in 25g calvados or apple juice overnight
- 250 g eating apples cored, peeled and grated
Cream cheese frosting
- 280 g full fat cream cheese
- 160 g white chocolate
- green food colouring
Witches’ Hats (optional)
- 400 g dark chocolate tempered
- 50 g white chocolate tempered, coloured orange
Instructions
- Soak the raisins in the Calvados or apple juice overnight.
- Prepare a 12-hole, deep, muffin tin – either line with cupcake liners or grease lightly and place strips of parchment into the holes to aid lifting the cakes out once baked. Set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 190C.
- Beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment for 5-10 mins until ribbon stage. This is when you can draw a figure of 8 with the mixture dropping from the beater and it leaves a visible trail or ribbon.
- Gradually add the oil
- Sift the dry ingredients and fold in.
- Add the grated apple and raisins and mix until fully combined.
- Pour into the prepared muffin tin and bake for 25-30 mins.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10 minutes before demoulding and placing on a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Beat the cream cheese until smooth.
- Melt the white chocolate until just melted and beat into the cream cheese. Colour with green colouring. Set aside at room temperature (don’t put it in the fridge as it will become too hard to pipe).
- Temper the dark chocolate and pour 200g onto a sheet of acetate. Place another acetate sheet on top and using a rolling pin or something similar, smooth the chocolate out to a flat rectangle.
- Allow the chocolate to semi set and then punch discs into the acetate using the 5cm round cutter ensuring the disc goes all the way through the chocolate.
- Place the acetate on a flat tray and place another tray on top to prevent the chocolate from warping. Place the tray in the fridge to fully set for 15-20 minutes.
- On a flat tray, place a piece of acetate onto the stencil. Make a paper piping bag (or you could use a plastic one). Put some tempered dark chocolate into the piping bag and pipe the outline of the witches hats first and then fill in the rest of the shape. Piping the outline helps contain the chocolate in the shape.
- When it is semi set, place a piece of parchment on top and a flat tray on top of that to prevent the hats from warping. Place in the fridge to fully set for 15-20 mins.
- Remove the hats from the fridge and remove the tray and covering acetate. Temper the white chocolate and colour with orange. Using a paper piping bag, pipe a blob onto the centre of the witch’s hats and leave to fully set at room temperature.
- Remove the chocolate discs from the fridge and remove the covering acetate. Break out the discs of chocolate and place onto a lined tray.
- Heat the oven to 100C and place a baking tray in it to warm for a couple of minutes (you don’t want it boiling hot – just nearly too hot to handle).
- Remove the tray from the oven and rub the bottom of the hats on the hot surface to flatten it and melt it a little. Place the melted edge onto the round disc and spray the back (the side that doesn’t have the orange dot) with a cooling spray. This sets the chocolate quickly so the hat can stand up on its own.
- Now put the cream cheese frosting into a piping bag fitted with a rose tip of your choice and pipe the cream cheese frosting onto the cake.
- To finish the cakes, place a chocolate hat on top and press lightly in place.
Notes
- The cakes will freeze without the chocolate hats – you can freeze them with or without the cream cheese frosting. Just apply the chocolate hats once fully defrosted.
- This recipe works well by substituting gluten free flour for the normal flour.
- If you didn’t want to make the chocolate hats, you could just leave them out or decorate the cream cheese frosting with chopped nuts or something similar. You could also leave out the green colouring to have just a white frosting; the recipe wouldn’t need any further adjustment.
- Here's a copy of the stencil I used for the witches' hats for you to download Witches hat template